221b and Under The Dome

From the mainstream… A couple of examples of big media companies promoting major properties with transmedia games:

221B is a two-player Facebook-based game to promote Guy Ritchie’s new Sherlock Holmes film – apparently devised for Warner Brothers by AKQA. The game immerses you and your playing partner (one as Holmes and one as Watson) into the world of Sherlock Holmes and takes you through the events leading up to the first scene of the new film. I’ll be starting tomorrow, as soon as my Dr Watson is ready…
CC

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To publicise the release of Stephen King’s new doorstop novel, Under The Dome, Hodder & Stoughton have organised a treasure hunt, asking for people to volunteer as Hiders, Seekers and Writers – with prizes for each. Hodder have broken the book’s 336,114 words (!) into 5196 pieces. Hiders are required to hide the pieces, online and offline; Seekers are then given clues to find them. Writers are asked to “take inspiration from the theme of Under The Dome and enter our creative writing competition.”

Nice idea? Exciting? Engaging? Well, the competition closed on November 7th (two days ago) and the first prize was a night in a 4 star hotel (ooh) on November 8th (yesterday) in London (where most of the players already live).

But so far there’s no sign of who’s won on either their Twitter (last update Nov 6th) or their website, which hasn’t changed and still invites participation in the competition. Sloppy.

Why can’t they be bothered to update – especially after Tweeting so much to launch the campaign?

Why did they set such an early closing date if they still want people to keep playing? It doesn’t look like there’s been much action so far – games of this complexity need time and community coordination to get going.

And (perhaps above all) why do they think it’s necessary to incentivize people with a conventional competition, with unknown judges and a not-quite-glittering prize which has to be accepted and used within hours of the competition closing?

So much potential in this idea, but the execution has the appearance of a rush job by people who don’t really care that much.

We’re going to see a lot of these, I think – thought up by marketing departments, not long before the release of a movie, book or show. It would be great to see more story games planned right from the start, with the content producers themselves organically involved. They’re the ones with the skills, passion & in-depth knowledge of the story world. And they’re the ones people want to connect with – never mind the shoddy prizes.

This is what Ted Hope was getting at with his Six Pillars of Cinema. But even for non-independent movies, helping devise interactive marketing should be as much a part of the writer’s or filmmaker’s responsibilities as doing endless press tours – it would probably be a more effective use of time & resources, and would certainly be more fun.
RH